OUT OF THE PAST

Jane Greer

OUT OF THE PAST (1947). Director: Jacques Tourneur.

"You're like a leaf that's been blown from one gutter to another."

Jeff (Robert Mitchum) has a new life running a gas station, as well as a girlfriend named Ann (Virginia Huston), when his past catches up with him in the person of gunsel, Joe (Paul Valentine). Joe works for crooked big shot Whit (Kirk Douglas), and some time ago he hired Jeff to go after his gorgeous gal pal, Kathie (Jane Greer), who not only shot Whit but left town with $40,000 in cash. In flashback we learn how Jeff caught up with Kathie and decided he wanted her for himself. But Kathie may have had other plans. Now she's back with Whit, who wants Jeff to do a favor for him -- or else. Well, Out of the Past should be prime film noir -- it certainly has all of the elements (even if much of it is actually played in sunlight instead of shadows), including a beautiful femme fatale, but somehow this just doesn't add up. The characters are little more than stick figures, brought to life with satisfactory but somehow second-rate thesping. Everyone, especially Douglas, who underplays nicely, is cool and professional but there's something missing, although Paul Valentine [House of Strangers] probably has the best role of his career in this and runs with it. Virginia Huston [Tarzan's Peril] is pleasant and competent but she only had a few credits after this. Dickie Moore [Passion Flower] makes an impression as the deaf and mute boy who works for Jeff at the gas station, as do Ken Niles as the nervous lawyer, Eels, and Rhonda Fleming as his secretary. Others in the cast are Steve Brodie as Jeff's former partner, and Richard Webb as a man who's carrying a long-time torch for Ann. The film is beautifully photographed in crisp black and white by Nicholas Musuraca [Clash By Night], and Roy Webb has contributed an effective theme. There's a certain poignancy to the conclusion, hinging on a not-so-little white lie. (Whether the lie should have been told or not Ill leave up to the individual viewer.) There's so much confusing going back and forth from place to place by the cast that it gets somewhat tiresome after awhile.

Verdict: For a great film noir with Robert Mitchum watch Otto Preminger's Angel Face instead of this. **1/2. 

MILLION DOLLAR LEGS

Jack Oakie and W. C. Fields

MILLION DOLLAR LEGS (1932). Director: Edward F. Cline.

Traveling salesman Migg Tweeney (Jack Oakie of Thieves Highway) comes to the small, impoverished nation of Klopstokia -- where the men are all named George and the women are all named Angela -- and promptly falls in love with the President's (W. C. Fields) daughter, Angela (Susan Fleming) and vice versa. But the President will not allow Angela to marry Migg unless he can come up with a way of raising needed capital to keep the man in office as his advisers plot to oust him any way they can. Noticing how athletic the people are, Migg comes up with the idea of Klopstokia entering the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. But will Angela's countrymen be able to keep up their morale once Mata Machree (Lyda Roberti) pulls a vamp on all of them and sets one against another? Million Dollar Legs is a very silly movie, and some of the gags in the script co-written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz are creaky groaners (although still funny) but the movie is amiable and amusing enough to work, with many clever sight gags. The wonderful Fields [The Bank Dick] is simply not given enough to do, and one can only imagine how much better the movie would have been if Bob Hope had been cast in the Oakie part. (Oakie gets equal billing with Fields, a situation that would not last much longer.) Susan Fleming is an appealing heroine, but the real scene-stealer in this is Lyda Roberti. Although Mata Machree is billed as "the woman no man can resist" there's a comic absurdity in the fact that Roberti, while cute, is not exactly a raving beauty, but she certainly can dance in a mighty sexy manner, slithering sensually in a way that borders on camp. Ben Turpin and little Dickie Moore [Blonde Venus] are also in the cast and add their own brand of humor.

Verdict: More of Fields would have helped, but this is a cute picture with lots of laughs. ***.

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS

Portrait of evil: Douglas Fowley

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS (1948). Director: Budd Boetticher.

Reporter Kathy Lawrence (Lucille Bremer) importunes new private eye Ross Stewart (Richard Carlson) to work with her to find a missing corrupt judge whose capture will net them $5000 a piece. The only problem is that Ross will have to get himself committed to the La Siesta sanitarium where Kathy is sure the judge is hiding. Once inside the institution, Ross discovers there's more corruption and danger than  he ever anticipated. Carlson is fine as the flip, overly insouciant private eye who discovers some situations are more serious than others, and Bremer [Till the Clouds Roll By] is okay, but the most striking performance is from Douglas Fowley [He's a Cockeyed Wonder] as the sadistic and utterly evil attendant, Larson. Thomas Browne Henry is fine as the head of the institution and there's nice work from Ralf Harolde [Night Nurse] as Dobbs, another, nicer attendant. A fully grown Dicke Moore plays a young patient who is actually Dobbs' son. John Holland plays a state psychiatrist, Kathleen Freeman has a bit as a nurse, and Tor Johnson plays another inmate who tries to box Carlson to bits in the film's liveliest sequence. I don't know if Behind Locked Doors was the first film to use the premise of a sane man feigning mental illness to get inside an institution for some purpose, but in the early sixties two movies followed suit. In Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor a reporter hopes to win a Pulitzer and Shock Treatment presents a guy whose intention is to get information about some missing moolah. This movie is barely an hour long.

Verdict: Snappy B thriller with a highly sinister Fowley. ***.

SO RED THE ROSE

Randolph Scott and Margaret Sullavan; guess who loves whom

SO RED THE ROSE (1935). Director: King Vidor.

When the Civil War breaks out it deeply affects the Southern Bedford family, run by patriarch, Malcolm (Walter Connolly), who is married to Sally (Janet Beecher), with whom he has two sons (Harry Ellerbe; Dickie Moore) and a daughter, Val (Margaret Sullavan). Val is in love with a distant cousin, Duncan (Randolph Scott), but he seems completely unaware of her feelings whereas George Pendleton (Robert Cummings) has affection for Val. At first Duncan tries to be neutral, which prompts Val to accuse him of cowardice, not exactly the right way to get a romance off to a good start. But then Duncan joins up with the confederacy and off to war he goes ... This is a more or less forgotten Civil War epic made four years before Gone With the Wind, but it's a creditable film, bolstered by fine performances by Sullavan [The Good Fairy], Connolly, and others; Elizabeth Patterson [Lady on a Train] overacts a bit as old Mary Cherry but is also good. On the debit side is a lot of phony glory and the depiction of rebellious slaves as being both lazy and criminal. Johnny Downs [Trocadero] plays a Yankee soldier, a mere boy, who is temporarily hidden by the Bedfords. The film is well-photographed by Victor Milner -- one especially striking shot shows Sullavan running past a tree into the sun.

Verdict: Anything with Sullavan in it is of interest, but this is not a bad movie despite flaws. ***.

BLONDE VENUS

BLONDE VENUS (1932). Director: Joseph von Sternberg.

While on a camping trip in Germany Ned Faraday (Herbert Marshall) comes across Helen (Marlene Dietrich) swimming with other pretty chorus girls and it's love at first sight. In one of the swiftest transitions I've ever seen in any movie, practically the next second  the two are married, living in the U.S., and have a cute little boy named Johnny (Dickie Moore). [I mean there isn't even a two-second shot of their wedding let alone any scenes of courtship.] It develops early on that Ned has a serious illness and needs a lot of money to travel to get treatment, so Helen goes back to work [billed as the "Blonde Venus" in a campy "African" night club number in which she first appears in a gorilla suit] and gets the money from playboy Nick Townsend (Cary Grant). What follows is a series of misunderstandings and recriminations, with Helen on the run with Johnny and Ned in pursuit and so on. This is neither one of Dietrich's best performances nor one of her better movies, and Grant, Marshall and even little Dickie Moore come off better than Dietrich. Blonde Venus is the kind of dopey movie in which even while on the run and hungry for food Dietrich can somehow manage to afford a maid [the always-wonderful Hattie McDaniel]! The "Hot Voodoo" number, while utterly impossible to take seriously, is a hoot, and Dietrich's flat singing as delightfully awful as ever. Sidney Toler plays a police detective hunting Helen, and Sterling Holloway has a small role as a friend of Ned's in the early scenes in Germany.

Verdict: At least Dietrich looks beautiful no matter what her tribulations. **.

MISS ANNIE ROONEY

MISS ANNIE ROONEY (1942). Director: Edwin L. Marin.

"Barbaric! -- But it's fun!"

Sweet little Annie Rooney (Shirley Temple) sort of has a kind of steady in pal Joey (Roland Dupree), who loves jazz and jalopies, but she really flips when she meets the sincere and kind-hearted Marty (Dickie Moore), who invites her to his birthday party. "Where on Earth did you meet someone with that name?" asks his snobbish mother, played by Dracula's Daughter herself, Gloria Holden. Alas, Annie's father (William Gargan) is an out of work inventor with aspirations, and Master Marty lives on Sutton Place, and how can Annie afford to buy the proper dress for such a high-toned address? Grandpa (Guy Kibbee) puts on his thinking cap, and it all works out in the end. The good-natured tone of the piece and the excellent acting from the entire cast help disguise the fact that this is really just a lower case Alice Adams, but it does explore the indignations of poverty with some veracity. June Lockhart plays a snobbish girl at the party and Peggy Ryan is Annie's good friend, Myrtle. Although now in her early teens, Temple had lost none of her charm or acting ability. Moore, Gargan and Kibbee are also perfectly swell. Speaking of swells, Shirley wins them over by demonstrating how to dance the jitterbug.

Verdict: If you don't like this movie "you're not hep to the jive!" ***.

PASSION FLOWER

PASSION FLOWER (1930). Director: Uncredited.



"Men are kind of handy in the day time and sort of entertaining in the evening. But as far as I'm concerned, I'd just as soon have a good radio." -- Zazu Pitts.

Katherine (Kay Johnson) infuriates her father by marrying the family chauffeur Dan (Charles Bickford). Her cousin Dulce (Kay Francis) is married to a wealthy, much older man, Tony (Lewis Stone). Proud and stubborn, Dan refuses Dulce's help until circumstances force him to give in. Unfortunately the two proceed to fall in love, causing the expected painful complications. As the selfish Dulce, Francis isn't bad, but her part is too one-dimensional for us to feel much sympathy for her and at times her acting is artificial and stilted. Johnson is quite lovely and affecting as the heart-broken Katherine. The gruff Bickford is an unlikely lover boy but a good actor nevertheless; his scenes with his two little boys are touching (Dickie Moore is adorable as Tommy) but his character is also a bit of a stinker. Zazu Pitts plays Katharine and Dan's pessimistic landlady who somehow winds up moving to a farm with them as housekeeper.

Verdict: Entertaining, but maybe not enough passion. **1/2.